Aug 22, 2015 7 min read

GROVE CITY, Ohio – As the most successful horseman in Ohio harness racing, Scioto Downs-based trainer Virgil Morgan Jr. has license to spend his mornings lollygagging in his loungewear and his evenings hobnobbing in the clubhouse.

Morgan, 49, is the first North American harness trainer to reach 5,000 victories since records were first kept in 1992.

His horses won more than $47 million in purses in his career, during which he finished among the top-10 winningest trainers in 16 of the past 19 years.

Morgan dominated Scioto Downs so thoroughly in recent decades the track lost count of his consecutive training titles. After double-checking, it was determined Morgan is on pace for his 22nd straight. Clearly, Morgan is the best at his home track and one of the best in his sport. But he can be better, he said. His horses can be better, he said.

So Morgan will wake at his Grove City home at 4:55 a.m., as he does most days, and there will be precious little downtime until he gets home from the track late in the evening, as he does most nights.

“Your top trainers, they’re all like that,” said driver Josh Sutton, who picks up most of Morgan’s drives at Scioto Downs. “But he’s more hands-on than most trainers. That means a lot. You can tell when you sit behind the horses and see how they are.”

On a typical day, Morgan will have sent a mass text message to his employees by 6:30 a.m., laying out the day’s training schedule. By 7, he has made sure his horses’ racing schedules are set. By lunchtime, he checked in with his blacksmith and veterinarian, reviewed any health issues and is on the track for several training sets behind multiple horses.

“I don’t require a lot of sleep,” Morgan said.

Nor does he require a lot of praise or pomp. Although he did show up to an event in which he was presented with the key to Grove City in 2013, Morgan is not one for winner’s circle photos or for chit-chat, unless it’s with his teenage children, son, Tre, and daughter, Kiara.

“Virgil just doesn’t have time for small talk,” said owner Carl Howard, the CEO of the Fazoli’s restaurant chain who has 20 to 25 horses in training with Morgan, including many they co-own. “That can be something that doesn’t go over too well with people. He’s nice to people, but he has to move on. He has work to do.”

Morgan bought his first horse at 17 and later started working for Scioto Downs-based trainer Randy Owens before striking out on his own in the late 1980s. Morgan’s horses won more than $1 million in purses for the first time in 1998. These days, Morgan can have as many as 70 horses in his stables at a time, with 15 or 20 more based at his satellite operation in New Jersey.

Although he employs a staff of about 30, including assistant trainers, grooms and caretakers, Morgan is a hands-on horseman, priding himself, he said, on giving as much personal attention to the lowliest claimer as he does a prized invitational horse.

The jogging cart and equipment bag are arguably his most important tools.

Some days, the staging area outside Morgan’s barn can look like “a runway at LaGuardia,” with horses waiting for and returning from their spins around the track with Morgan at the reins, said Harolene Johnston, Morgan’s sister and administrative assistant.

“With some large stables, and I’ve worked for many, if you pay Joe Blow to train your horse, Joe Blow never gets behind that horse,” said blacksmith Dave Thomas, who has been working for Morgan for more than two decades. “If you pay Virgil Morgan to train your horse, you get Virgil Morgan.”

What comes with that is Morgan’s knowledge of the important aspects of harness racing and an uncanny ability to produce winners that has been developed by more than three decades of experience at tracks across Ohio.

Morgan prefers to keep a low profile at Scioto Downs on racing nights. He will hit the paddock to chat with Sutton or head to the clubhouse, where he often sits alone with his reading glasses perched on his nose, a pile of paperwork and closed-circuit television controls close at hand.

Morgan keeps close tabs on racing throughout North America, parlaying that knowledge into an ability to expertly classify his horses, making sure they are racing at the right place at the right time and against the right competition. He has long been a major player in the claiming game, never afraid to add a new horse to his stable if he thinks it can help his operation.

Morgan, too, is obsessive over the equipment and shoeing setups of his horses, and is unafraid to try new setups or training regimens. Past successes don’t matter much if he thinks a horse can do more.

In fact, Morgan said, he prefers not to know much about the routine or setup of any new horse that comes to his stable.

“Other trainers see a successful horse and just keep doing the same thing,” said John Reichert, a Grove City equine veterinarian who has worked with Morgan for years.

“He’ll change things up and see if it makes the horse happier. He’s very perceptive of what a horse is going to respond to.”

Morgan keeps himself in prime physical condition, looking much younger than 49. He loves sports – he played football, basketball and baseball growing up in Grove City – and he views his horses as athletes.

Morgan is big on sports analogies, comparing Sutton to a quarterback, his grooms to offensive linemen and himself to a head coach.

The horses are his skill players.

“And they can’t talk, so they’re tough to coach,” Morgan said.

Yet, Morgan loves the challenge. He studies their blood work, their gait and their temperament, always in search of more speed.

Horses fascinated him since he was a child, when his late father, “Big Virg,” and uncle dabbled in thoroughbred ownership and were regulars at Scioto Downs.

“He’s got stopwatches, the old kind, the silver ones, all over the place,” Johnston said. “He wants to have the fastest and the best, and he’s got a knack for it. He wants the best for those horses and he gets to know them very, very well.”

Howard said Morgan would never admit it, but he is a trainer who can get attached to his horses because he is around them so much. Morgan secretly hates seeing them claimed or sold, he said.

Morgan’s bread-and-butter remains overnight and stakes racing in Ohio, though he has hit it big on occasion, training six horses that won $1 million or more in their careers.

Mister Big was a two-time Dan Patch winner as the pacer in his division in 2007 and 2008. Pet Rock, one of the fastest pacers in the sport’s history, won almost $2 million before retiring in 2013.

Both helped ease the burden on Morgan when Ohio’s harness industry was struggling before the legalization of casino-style slots injected new life into the state’s tracks in 2012.

A new era was beginning to dawn, and Morgan said he finally allowed himself to step back and enjoy Pet Rock’s run.

“Usually, when a horse hits the wire, I’m immediately thinking about what I want to do with the horse the next week or if there is anything I can do to improve the performance,” Morgan said. “I think sometimes I don’t enjoy the racing as much as I should or could, but nobody really cares that you won 5,000 races or $50 million in purse money. They care about the next race.”

Morgan considered moving his entire operation to the more lucrative East Coast in the 2000s but elected to stick it out.

Now, he trains all year at Scioto Downs, keeping his stable there even in winter. His presence adds panache.

“I’m sure some don’t want to hear it, but there would not be this quality of racing in Ohio right now if he was somewhere else,” Howard said. “He’s brought in other owners with some unbelievably talented hoses. If he was gone, it would have taken a lot longer for the quality of racing that we have to come back.”